Tag Archives: rug celaning

After a dull, wet winter our area rugs have taken a beating. They have trapped in lot of loose dirty, salt, sand, and mud and after a few months of this they look really grubby. At Luv-A-Rug, in Victoria BC, we clean area rugs that barely look dirty to ones that are more dirt than rug.

Here is one runner that came in very dirty, you can barely see the original colours of the rug. This rug will get a lot of badgering (which is where we vibrate your rugs upside down to remove the deep down dirt), and many cleanings to restore this rug.

After we clean this rug I will do a follow-up blog post to show how it cleans up.

Luv-A-Rug understands that you can be embarrassing by the shape of your rugs, don’t be, we have seen rugs in all states of dirtiness. We care about restoring your rugs to a lovable state and making you happy. We take care of every type of spill, pet accident, moth damage, mold, odours, and dirt.

I have a sad rug story today. It is about a rug that got improperly cleaned and now has mold issues.

It is a common scenario when you get your wall to wall carpet cleaned and the carpet cleaner looks at your rugs and says, “Hey, Do you want me to clean your rugs too, since I am here?” It seems easy enough, your rugs need to be cleaned, the guy is already here, the price is good, “Sure, why not”

Luv-A-Rug knows that in home rug cleaning doesn’t get your rugs cleaned, it makes them look clean. There is a difference, a big difference. Here is a video I did today about a synthetic rug that was improperly cleaned and dried and the results that happened.

This situation can happen when you use a carpet shampooer on your rugs too. Over wetting and under drying is not good for area rugs. This rug is synthetic fiber, so there was no colour bleed, but with a wool rug if this happened to the end result could be a bad abstract design on your rug.

Now you may be thinking that I am only saying this because Luv-A-Rug cleans area rugs, and no we don’t do in home cleaning of carpet or rugs. What we do see is rugs that have been damaged by improper cleaning, and spot removal treatments. Plus with all of our training in cleaning , especially Wool rugs, and knowledge of area rugs we know how to clean all types of area rugs professionally.

That is not to say that you should never let your carpet cleaner clean your rugs, as long as he takes them out of your home for cleaning and returns them to you. It is the in home rug cleaning that causes the issues, not only to your rugs, but to your flooring, the air quality in your home and not having all the dirt come out of your rug.

The way to check to see if your rugs are clean is to do the 6 second test.

Take any rug you’ve just had cleaned & dried and turn it upside on the floor

Run a beater bar vacuum for 6 seconds on a small area over the back of the rug

Lift the rug up and if you see any dirt on the floor, your cleaner is leaving dirt behind

“I’ve performed the six second challenge on rugs cleaned with every type of cleaning system imaginable and found they all have left behind the heavy, gritty sediments that damage the rug fibers and shorten the life of a rug.”, said Stephen “Dusty” Roberts Owner of Luv-A-Rug.

There is no way for dirt to hide when you do this. This is why Luv-A-Rug uses the Rugbadger first when we clean your rugs. Most of the dirt that is hiding in your rugs is not water-soluble, so instead of making mud that stays in your rugs we vibrate it out before cleaning. Some times if your rug is hiding a lot fine dirt after the first cleaning we send it back for more badgering and then continue with more cleaning.

Don’t let just anyone clean your rugs, if your rugs get ruined they may not be able to be replaced by the same rug. If your flooring gets damaged it can be a hassle to get fixed. The worse case is if your carpet cleaner is not insured and you have to replace and repair everything yourself. If you do your research first this worse case scenario doesn’t happen.

There is a lot of incomplete advice on how to clean area rugs on the Internet, contacting professional rug cleaning companies is the best way to go.In Victoria, BC and Vancouver Island contact Luv-A-Rug at 250-590-6210/1-800-886-2802 or e-mail us at luvvie@shaw.ca.

I hate seeing area rugs that have been damaged by improper cleaning and spot treatments, so I will keep writing about the proper way to care for rugs and sharing my knowledge of how rugs are made to educate everyone so that we can enjoy clean, healthy rug for many years to come.